For the past three weeks I’ve been leading my Sunday School class through the history of Christmas–not the history of Jesus’ birth but rather the history of us celebrating the birth of Jesus. I confess one of my sources for preparing lessons was the nine Anxious Bench posts I have written about Christmas during the past eight years. So I thought I would pull these posts together for you as well as provide some commentary and reflection. I hope you... Read more
I have been writing a chapter on the history of Baptists in Latin America for the Oxford Handbook of Baptist studies. It has been interesting to trace some limitations on what has been written about the group. It is a complex history, being multilingual, multinational, multiracial, multicultural, and multidirectional. Yet, historians often compiled the history of Baptists in the region in volumes that suggest that Baptist groups located in radically different places shared one bounded identity. Historians of Latin American... Read more
“In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” John 1:1–13 is the Christmas story according to the Gospel of John. It was written for an audience that was already Christian, so maybe they didn’t need to be reminded of all the stories of Jesus becoming a baby. They are introduced to Jesus with a hymn... Read more
The feast of Hanukkah begins this year on the evening of Sunday, December 18. Although Christians do not celebrate the feast, anyone with Jewish friends or neighbors will know it as a lovely event, with its lights burning through the Winter darkness, and its symbolism of liberation. But although it is not Christian, Hanukkah does feature in the New Testament, in an odd and suggestive way. Bear with me as I pursue a seasonal exploration here, and focus strongly on... Read more
Since my earliest memories, my life has been defined by books. I have always loved reading widely, and have especially enjoyed fiction, preferably of the variety that has had a chance to age a couple of millennia. My main major in college was Classics (Greek and Latin languages, literature, and history), but I added a second major in French literature, just because I loved having an excuse to read an extra novel or so each week. Fast-forward two decades, and... Read more
James Diddams recently published a piece at First Things provocatively entitled “The Real Problem at Wheaton College.” Diddams’s essay asserts that Wheaton College’s real problem is not liberal drift, as others have argued. Rather, the real issue is “few students care about or even understand the mission of Christian intellectual formation.” He continues: “Wheaton students tend to focus on practical career training and individual spirituality, giving little thought to how liberal learning can enhance one’s spiritual life or the importance... Read more
The war in Ukraine has called attention to the country’s religious life and its history. Most air time is giving to the Orthodox church, about which my colleague Nicholas Denysenko is a leading expert. But to understand the struggle going on, one must also recognize that Ukraine’s Greek Catholic church, which worships like the Orthodox but is under Rome’s authority, has long vexed Moscow. I treat the persecution of this community under Stalin in a current book project—Unholy: Secularist Violence... Read more
Today the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of San Juan Diego, the first indigenous saint of the Americas, whose canonization I attended in Mexico City with Pope St. John Paul the Great on July 31, 2002. Juan Diego has since been joined by St. Kateri Tekakwitha, canonized at St. Peter’s Basilica by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, and the boy martyrs of Tlaxcala, Mexico, whom Pope Francis canonized at St. Peter’s in 2017. Earlier this week, on December 6, the... Read more
I am delighted to announce the imminent publication of my new book! It is titled He Will Save You from the Deadly Pestilence: The Many Lives of Psalm 91. The publisher is Oxford University Press, who announce that it will ship on December 13. As it turned out, my own book developed a fair number of lives of its own. As it emerged, I found I was writing military history and medical history, studying pandemics and popular culture, music and... Read more
The discussion around Jay Green’s piece last week is beginning to die down and Beth Barr, Kristin Du Mez and Jemar Tisby have responded in their characteristic ways. So now seems as good a time as any to add my considerations. We can consider a follow up to Joey’s recent post. My reflection, however, begins with my reaction to a book that may seem irrelevant but actually draws attention to a broader set of questions. In a nutshell, this debate... Read more
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